Is it better to have Self-Esteem or Self-Compassion?
Does connection have anything to do with it?
Those are the question I’ll be talking about today.
In the past I connected self-esteem with how I thought others were viewing me or as something I just wasn’t born with.
How ridiculous is that?
I mean, I’m not knocking myself for thinking that way, it’s what I truly believed.
Now that I have more life under my belt, I realize that the way I view myself is the basis of self-esteem and what others think about me is none of my business. They can have the opinions that they choose, just like I allow myself to make my own choices.
I came to realize that part of what makes up my self-esteem comes from how I treat myself.
How much do I value my word?
When I told myself I would do something for ME, did I do it?
Beginning to make and keep commitments to MYSELF is when I first experienced my self-esteem increase.
I’ve been studying a lot about self-compassion lately. And when I came to some information about how self-compassion and self-esteem compare…I was even more interested.
Self-esteem, at its core, is the way we evaluate our worthiness and judging whether we are a good and valuable person. It usually comes when we feel that we’re good at things that are important to us.
If we’re good at something, but it’s not especially important to us, it doesn’t strengthen our self-esteem. Isn’t that interesting?
We can increase our self-esteem in two ways, according to William James who was one of the founding fathers of Western Psychology.
One way is to value the things were good at and put less value in the things were not so good at.
Another way we raise our self-esteem can be by increasing our competence in the things that are important to us.
Some other researchers also said that self-esteem can come from the “looking glass self”. That is how I used to see it…how we appear in the eyes of others. If we think others think highly of us, then we feel good about ourselves. So I guess I wasn’t totally off on this one.
So…self-esteem can come from not only our own self-judgement but our PERCEIVED judgement of others.
Self-esteem research has shown that it seems to be the consequence rather than the cause of healthy behaviors.
Self-esteem isn’t associated with being a better person, you just think that you are.
Self-esteem doesn’t seem like all it’s cracked up to be to me.
I mean, it can make you happier BUT…
There are too many subjective things that factor into how you end up feeling about yourself.
It gives me that yucky feeling when I’m explaining it to you.
What if we defined our self-worth from a completely different viewpoint?
What if our positive feelings about ourselves came from our hearts rather than our minds?
That’s the difference between Self-Esteem and Self-Compassion.
I like the way I feel much better when I talk about self-compassion.
Self-compassion recognizes that all humans have both strengths and weaknesses and aren’t better or worse because of them.
Our worth actually has nothing to do with what we do, it’s just a condition of being. We are all of the same worth. Nothing we do changes our value.
Self-compassion does not depend on being special or better than other people, it doesn’t come because we do something better, it comes from caring about ourselves.
A self-compassionate person loves themselves with no explainable reason.
Self-esteem and self-compassion do tend to go together, but self-compassion has the advantage because when things go bad, the way you treat yourself doesn’t change.
When you have compassion for yourself, you are able to accept who you are regardless of what you do or what others think about you.
Talk about letting go of a burden!
What about the question of connection?
Do you feel more connected to someone when you are in competition with them or when you are working together?
Does that answer change if you direct it at yourself?
If you want to feel more connected to yourself, compassion is the way to create it.
Supporting and loving and being kind to yourself, especially when no one else is doing that for you, creates and deepens the connection you feel with yourself.
When you’ve created this type of connection with your SELF, that’s what I refer to as the Uniquee Connection, then you’re able to create deeper connections with others.
Discovering the amazing feeling of self-compassion and using that to create a connection with my true self has turned my life into something I never thought possible.
I want to continue to share the amazing life you can create for yourself by studying self-compassion and connection here on the podcast.
So, let’s get together again next week for another episode.
Thanks for joining me here today and remember:
I see you. I understand how hard you’re trying, and I’d like to help however I can.
Have a wonderful day and I’ll see you back here next week.
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